1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system operating system boot, and more particularly to a system and method for information handling system multimedia mode boot optimization.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
An increasingly common use of information handling systems, particularly portable systems, is for the display of multimedia information, such as presentations and videos. For instance, portable information handling systems are often used by business people to display presentations to groups through a projector with presentations such as Powerpoint. As another example, portable information handling systems are often used for entertainment by the playing of DVD movies with a DVD drive device. Generally in order to use an information handling system to display multimedia information, the operating system of the information handling system brings all devices to an operational status and maintains all devices in the operational status whether or not a particular device supports the display of multimedia information. For instance, while a user plays a DVD movie on an information handling system disc drive, the operating system typically maintains networking devices and antivirus applications operational even though these devices and applications are not needed to play the DVD movie. Unused but enabled devices and applications waste CPU cycles, such as by unnecessary scans for a network, so that, under some circumstances the presentation of the multimedia information is unnecessarily and adversely impacted.
A difficulty that often arises with the presentation of multimedia information through a portable information handling system is that the internal battery charge expires prematurely, such as in the middle of a lengthy DVD movie. Another difficulty that arises is that presentation of the multimedia information is delayed by the normal boot process that the operating system uses to bring all of the processing components and automatically initiated programs to a normal operational state. Although portable information handling systems have modes of operation that reduce power consumption to preserve battery life, such as shutting down the display or otherwise hibernating, those modes of operation typically do not take effect while the information handling system is in active use, such as during presentation of multimedia information. Some specialized systems have been developed to provide “instant on” for playing DVD movie or CD audio information with reduced start-up time and battery consumption. However, such specialized systems typically incorporate a unique custom player with an independent operating system, such as in the BIOS, custom hardware or a separate hard disc drive partition. The use of custom hardware and software processing components increases system design and manufacture cost.